This book is published to accompany the exhibition of the same name in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (10 October 2015 – 17 January 2016).

Around 1500 Jheronimus Bosch, and later Quinten Massijs and Lucas van Leyden, sparked a revolution in painting. Alongside the religious themes that had been customary until then, they took facets of everyday life as subjects for their panels. With their profane, satirical scenes, images full of mockery and malicious delight, situated in recognizable locations – inns, markets and whorehouses – these pioneers established a new school that reached its greatest heights in the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Society was reflected in art with irony and self-mockery. Sometimes there was a moral, but humour and satire predominated. These genre scenes mark the start of a pictorial idiom that endured well into the seventeenth century.

This book focuses on the first group of painters and printmakers who developed the new genre between, roughly, 1500 and 1570. Never before has an exhibition or publication been devoted to early genre art. Unlike a traditional catalogue this lavishly illustrated book, edited by curators Friso Lammertse and Peter van der Coelen, makes up for this lack with a broad overview of the most prominent artists and developments. Six thematic intermezzos turn the spotlight on a number of everyday objects depicted in the paintings and link them to objects in the museum’s collection. The book was designed by Tessa van der Waals.